To many marketers, Snapchat is a ridiculous, confusing app for the younger generations to fool around on. These people are not sure as to why the app still exists when it is such a difficult app to market on and wonder how the app is still running!
This article is for the marketers who are open to learning about the bizarre app. I hope to inform you on who Snapchat users are, what they are looking for, and how to market to them.
About 71% of Snapchat users are under the age of 34 and about ¾ of the users are female. Be sure to keep this in mind as you create your advertisements. I fall into both of these categories and would love to help marketers market to me.
What are Snapchat users looking for in content marketed to them you ask? Well, they aren’t looking to be marketed to at all.
The trick is to market to your audience without them knowing it. And you may already use this strategy in your other marketing platforms. For your advertisements to work on snapchat it is necessary that they feel “organic.” Snapchat gives you the opportunity to do so by placing the advertisement you create in between the stories of friends and the pages on Snapchats channels.
I have seen a couple of advertisement on Snapchat that have been in rotation and I thought they were actual posts from my friends. I would watch the whole advertisement (about a whole 5 seconds long) to the end and then realize it was an ad. I remember being impressed of their ability to make me believe the advertisement was a real story. Because they were able to do this, I was marketed to and awareness was grown.
“The more organic the ad feels and the later the branding appears, the more likely a user is to swipe up to view long-form content or web content,”- Liam Copeland
When a Snapchat user is advertised to, they have the ability to pass the video or to scroll up. If the user scrolls up, you did an awesome job in gaining user interest! (all the high fives to you!) When they scroll up they can be driven to the app store to download the app you just successfully advertised to them. They can be sent to your website, read your article or watch a longer video.
The way you want your potential customers react to your advertisement will help you create your Snapchat advertisement.
One aspect of Snapchat that draws in younger ages is how it is trendy and so are their best advertisements. An advertisement was created well when it is able to convince its young, contemporary audience that it’s product or service is cool. If your advertisement can convince Snapchat users that what you are selling will better their life with convenience or trendiness you are sure to gain customers as those two aspects are major sellers.
Another way to use Snapchat effectively for your advertising needs is through their face filters! Big industries create a filter that morphs the user’s face, usually in a funny way and also displays their logo on the screen. This is a great strategy as the users will take the good-humoured picture, post it and your brand will be shared via friends! Talk about innovative word of mouth referrals.
You can also advertise by creating a geofilter. These are filters that display the place at which a person took a picture. Snapchat users use these to show their friends when they are at the concert in town or asking their friends if anyone else will be at the university till late that night and so on. These geofilters can be created to advertise your place of work or an event that you are hosting and again, work great for referrals from friends.
It is very possible to advertise on Snapchat and it is very possible to gain customers through Snapchat. Those that are successful to do this have the great potential of their brand becoming very popular with the young market Snapchat provides you with.
Good luck, I hope to see your amazing ad on my Snapchat feed!
Tess Houcher
Snapchat’s website to begin your advertising through them is right here!